Some thoughts from a first game

[Tim Denee]

More! More! What happened during play? How did it compare with some of the other folks' experiences with the game (check out the forum)? What do you think of the "To King or not to King" issue?

Well, it was set in a local area, (I live in New Zealand), and that was the first major bonus for me, which I realise has nothing to do with the quality of the game. In any case, I end up viewing any game set in the US like a movie, which can definitely be cool for action and stuff, but when you need to immerse yourself, like in a horror game, it is not so good. So playing in Lower Hutt was excellent.

It was a three hour con game, and we spent the first hour generating characters, (more personal if we generate them ourselves), talking about childhood in the 1980s, (it was set in 1983, so it felt like childhood as we remember it), and playing around with our characters. No ominous threats, just fooling around at the pool, cracking jokes at each other's expense, doing a bit of rough-housing. The occasional die-roll made the silly competitiveness have a nice, realistic edge.

This was great fun. I'd love to be a kid again. It helped that another player at the table was really getting into it like I was. You really have to throw your dignity out the window, I think, and just go full-bore, which is really only possible if you have someone to intereact with. The other players were ok, but I think their fun was severely hampered by shyness, awkwardness, and "I-ain't-acting-like-a-kid"-itis. Having a loud inner child definitely helps this game.

Then we played spotlight at the park at night, and things started going wrong. One kid went crazy, attacked another kid, ambulance came, we went to the hospital, hospital went freaky on us, (we were seperated at the hospital, and when my group went to find the other, we found a bunch of rooms marked on the map with our names on them), we met up again, stole an ambulance, and got the hell out. When we got home we recieved a severe scolding for disappearing and for stealing an ambulance. Sigh.

I haven't actually read the book, only flicked through it, (but instantly fell in love with the design and artwork), so I felt as confused as my character, which heightened the experience. I felt genuine surprise when the caps I was shooting with my toy cap-gun knocked a nurse off his feet. I was disorientated, and afraid for Moo's (my character's nickname) life. The best horror role-playing experience I've ever had. Because I had no comprehension of the cosmology, (which I do now, to an extent, from reading these forums), it felt as real and raw and unexplicable as a nightmare.

I think my experience was hampered by the con 3 hour limit, in that we didn't get much chance to examine the psychology and home-life of our children, and because the player's weren't familiar with one another. But, I think it was heightened by our complete lack of cosmology knowledge, and, quite simply, by a good GM and a couple of good players.

Now that I know what I do about the issues which can be explored by the game, I can look at my character sheet more closely. I wrote about my home-life: "Lonely. Dad's a trucker on the road a lot, and mum is mentally quite distant from me". I knew I wanted a lonely home life, so I wrote that bit about the mother just to create that atmosphere. But, perhaps she's removed herself from life because her husband beats her occasionaly? What happens when I find out? (my character adores his father, but also has a strong cowboy-ish chivalrous romantic streak)

I really like the future write-up idea, but I don't think I'd use it in my games. I'd be going for genuine, irrational fear, in which thinking about life any way beyond tomorrow is a blessing, and where staying in the child mentality is very important. However, children have a great ability to stay happy, so 50% of the campaign would be light-hearted moments, if nothing else to contrast the horror and terror.

In trying to evoke some fear in the players, I think it is important to use adult fears. Fear, I think, in a role-playing game only comes when the player wills it and creates it from the material presented, and this is, obviously, a bit of stretch when you're talking about monsters under the bed. In the game I played, we only encountered a few actual menaces, and they were all human. This worked for me.

One question I would like to ask, is how do you role-play your character's response to true horror? I found this very difficult. I could not act in a sensible way, since a panicked person does not act sensibly. I wanted to feel the fear myself, so it was not simply a matter of my character doing what I thought they would be doing. I want to actually be irrationally dictating actions from my irrational mind-set, produced by a real fear, if you follow me.

As to the King issue, I heard hide nor hair of them in the game, and did not learn of them until I perused this forum. However, now that I think about it, one of my friends was strapped on an operating table with markings where his face was going to be sliced off, so obviously, in hindsight, the GM was thinking of the King of Envy.

With that in mind, I support the Kings, at least so long as the character never physically confront the beings. I found the horror of the hospital much more intensely with the inkling of some dark purpose behind what was going on. If I knew the exact purpose, it would not work, but if I thought it all only happened for fear, it also would not work. I had to believe that someone wanted or needed those faces of children, and that was disturbing. One thing, amonst many, I didn't like with the horror aspect of Deadlands was the fearmongers thing. Most demons existed only to feed on and generate fear. There was no dark plot. Just a simple motive repeated ad infinitum, for zombies, vampires, werewolves, giant worms, shadow creatures, and all the rest.

The Kings, from what I gather, also exist only to create fear, but in their case they have goals and methods which are dark and frightening, with an unseen structure. The thing is, I would want the players to not understand what is going, but I think if I centered the game around children confronting fears sans Kings, the children may not realise what is going on, but the players would. They would feel more comfortable. If there were a dark structure to the events, they would keep guessing, but never find the truth, and be as lost and confused as their characters.

Uh, yeah. "Some thoughts" my ass :)[/quote]

[Mike Holmes]

Let's see if I can paraphrase that last confusing bit. Players need ignorance of the specifics of the cause of something to make it really scary, but they also need to have an incoherent notion that there is some reason behind what is happening to avoid the understanding that it is just fear for fear's sake? Do I have that about right? So, then the Kings are good in principle, but bad if the players actually get to know what they are about specifically?

Am I close? What you wrote had a lot of double negatives and gramatical errors, so I'm trying to see if we can be clear.

If I am close, then I can see your point after a fashion.

Mike

[Tim Denee]

Spot on. Sorry about the mess of words, I was typing it as I thought it.

[Mike Holmes]

I think that you may have a point there. But then, how do you do that? If you put info in the book, the GM can try to keep it from the players, I suppose. OTOH, I you could just inform the GM to come up with some of these sorts of horrors of his own. But that's why I buy RPG materials to get such information. I guess my question would be "Do you think that it's good that the material is included in LF?" Or is that material ruined for you now that you know about it?

Mike

[Tim Denee]

A difficult question to answer truthfully, since I have not read the book, and so do not actually know a lot about the Kings. What I know at the moment would not spoil the game for me as a player, and would aid me as a GM.
Ideally, I would want the information there for the GM but kept from the players. Which, I realize, it would be futile to attempt.
As I said, I should really read the book before commenting, but I can say that I think there should be enough information to cut down on the GM's work, but that that information should be sufficiently vague that the GM can mould it as they see fit. In this way the players can read it, and still not know exactly who they face.

Hope that's clearer than my first post.